The Hunted Read online

  “What the hell are the Euros doing here?” shouted Lakota.

  “Good question!” Brent cried. “But the damn uplink is still down. Try hailing those birds.”

  “On it,” she replied.

  “He’s coming around,” hollered Juma, pointing at the sky and ushering them back behind a pair of fallen columns as the recoil-less autocannons on both choppers came alive, hundreds of rounds of caseless ammunition pounding into the ground as the militiamen scrambled for cover. Juma had said he had about two hundred in Dubai at the moment, two hundred on the island, and the rest scattered across the other islands and in the mid-desert areas. It seemed the Euros were intent on exterminating this piece of Juma’s network. “Come on!” the man cried.

  “Sir, Voeckler says the WAN uplink’s not down—it’s being jammed,” reported Lakota. “Can’t get through. And no response from those pilots.”

  Brent ducked behind the rocks and called up his roster. He tapped Daugherty. Their suits used the most sophisticated encryption technology on the planet, and that paid off because the LAN still worked and Daugherty answered the call. “I’m here, Ghost Lead.”

  “Euros have some gunships here over the island,” Brent reported.

  “Just going to call you. Troop transports landing about five clicks north of the tower. They’re deploying. Got a few heavy lifters dropping some armor. Not sure how many dismounts yet. Captain, what is this? The Euros got our backs now?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re attacking the militia, which in my book makes them the enemy.”

  “Sir, are you ordering us to attack them?”

  “Negative, but you’ll return fire if fired upon.”

  “Roger that.”

  Brent grabbed Lakota by the arm. “We need to get back.”

  She’d been listening in and nodded.

  A strange whirring and fluctuating hiss grew louder and was amplified by the suit’s sensors. Brent craned his head in time to watch the entire entrance to the compound—piles of rubble, really—explode into more fountains of rock and other jagged debris as the gunship’s pilot cut loose another missile, effectively sealing off the main entrance to Juma’s base.

  Two pickup trucks rolled into view with fifty-caliber machine guns mounted in their flatbeds. The men behind those fifties swung the barrels around and, howling at the gunships, directed their fire skyward as brass casings jingled and arced over the sides. Every third round was a tracer, slashing red hot against the night, and both men adjusted their fire, doing what they could to counterattack an overwhelming and technologically superior force. The engines, screams, and gunfire rose in a blaring crescendo as the gunners kept firing. Brent remembered what had happened to the two trucks in Sandhurst, and he doubted this situation would end any better.

  As expected, the Cheetahs responded in kind, diving boldly and directly into the onslaught, their pilots launching missiles at each of the pickup trucks.

  Brent couldn’t take his eyes off the scene as the gunners tried to bail out before those missiles struck, but they were too late, both enveloped by fireballs, as were the drivers.

  “What are they doing?” Juma demanded. “I thought you Americans were allied with them!”

  “So did I!” Brent retorted.

  And as quickly as the attack began, it ended, with both birds turning tail and heading southeast toward Dubai.

  “Why are they leaving?” asked Lakota.

  “I don’t know,” muttered Brent. “Call Daugherty.”

  She did. Brent told Juma they needed transport back to the vault and a contingent of men to come with them.

  “I’ll lead them myself.”

  One of Juma’s lieutenants came dashing up with a cell phone and thrust it into Juma’s hand. The conversation went quickly, and when it was finished, Juma said, “Some of my men attacked a convoy near Al Malaiha. Three trucks are still headed south. Also, there’s been another skirmish south of Dubai, along the coast. I don’t know what that’s about. My men did not recognize any of the forces there. Can you contact your people?”

  Brent frowned. He tried to call Grey himself. Still no uplink. “We’re being jammed. And until my people can stop it, I’m cut off from back home.”

  Juma nodded. “Very well. To the docks.”

  As they jogged off, Brent called back to Riggs and Schleck, who were still up on the rooftops. He warned them of the convoy.

  “No worries, Boss. We’re on it,” said Riggs.

  The Snow Maiden’s group was down to three trucks, and they would have to make the gold fit or leave some bricks behind, unless Patti could somehow arrange for a replacement. She sat in the back, trying to keep the flashlight steady as the medic gave her somber looks. He’d already started an IV on Chopra, but he didn’t seem very pleased with that and muttered to himself in Chinese.

  Chopra’s breathing had grown shallow and wheezy. Though the medic didn’t say it (he probably couldn’t say it in Russian), the Snow Maiden guessed that the bullet had pierced Chopra’s lung and chest cavity and that he was bleeding internally.

  If the old bastard could live long enough to get them into the vault, she’d be okay. Just keep him alive, she kept screaming to herself. Part of her wanted the stubborn old bastard to die; yet she pitied the man because he had put such faith and belief in a punk kid who would ultimately break his heart.

  She checked her watch. They were less than twenty minutes away now, and Chen Yi called her to say that he saw flashes, smoke, and fires in the distance.

  She grinned. The Europeans had arrived.

  Hussein sat across from them, his back pressed against the truck wall, fingers wrapped around a leather rung attached to the wall and used for strapping down cargo. “I want to tell you something,” he began, raising his voice above the shimmying truck.

  “What?” she said, grimacing.

  “You have to keep us alive. The vault is rigged. We’re both living keys. If we die while inside, the explosions will kill everyone and destroy the gold. My father was careful about these things. He explained everything to me. Showed me everything.”

  “Nice try, kid. We’ve studied the vault. We know exactly how it was constructed and what security measures are in place.”

  “You think you do.”

  She snorted. “We’ll see.” She glanced down at Chopra, still wheezing, and then at the medic, who was listening to Chopra’s chest through a stethoscope and plugging numbers into a touchpad medical device that was providing an ultrasound-like image of Chopra’s lungs.

  “Bullet here,” said the medic. “I find it. Not good.”

  “I need him alive for another half hour. Can you do that?”

  “Not sure,” said the medic.

  She glanced back at the kid, just as a tear slipped from one of his eyes.

  “So now you’re finally scared,” she said.

  “I’m not scared.” He dragged a hand across his face. “I’m not ...”

  “You should be.”

  “Are you really going to kill us?”

  “I don’t want you to die. I want you to lead your country. I told you that. But if you get in my way, then you know what’ll happen. It’s as simple as that.”

  Chopra began coughing loudly, and then he was choking, spitting up blood all over his shirt, over the medic, and the truck floor.

  The Snow Maiden screamed at the medic, who rifled through his bag, produced a needle, and punched it into Chopra’s ribs. He did something to the needle, and air whistled through. Chopra gasped and was beginning to calm. He caught a breath, then another.

  “He bleeds bad. Not much time,” said the medic.

  “How long?” she demanded.

  The medic shrugged.

  “Don’t let him die,” pleaded Hussein.

  Chopra reached out toward the boy, who just gaped at the bloody hand.

  A flotilla of about thirty boats left Kish Island, and Juma was able to take Brent and Lakota back in a high-speed cigar boat procured fro
m some Iranian drug dealers just after the nuclear exchange. It was, Juma had said, his personal ride.

  Tensions were expectedly high, and Brent was somewhat baffled because the choppers did not return to attack; it seemed they were being lured toward Dubai.

  As they neared the city—the skyscrapers like monoliths, black and dead—lightning, like flashes of combat, backlit the clouds about twenty miles north, somewhere near the airport, Brent estimated.

  But up there, on the Gold and Silver Towers respectively, were Brent’s eyes and ears, his own low-tech satellite feed in the form of snipers Schleck and Riggs.

  “They’ve got about ten Badgers rolling south from the airport area, but real slow,” said Schleck. “Real slow. Weird. They’re taking fire from the militia, but their response so far has been limited.”

  The European Federation’s AMZ-26 Badger was a hybrid-powered, eight-wheeled troop transport equipped with a Spanish-made thirty-millimeter dual-feed chain gun that fired seven hundred rounds per minute. Another variant came with a special multipurpose TOW missile system capable of engaging both ground and air targets.

  However, the most notable and dreaded feature of the vehicle was its high-powered microwave emitter, capable of dispersing groups of infantry with a less-than-lethal dose of microwaves producing the sensation of being burned alive.

  Brent had never seen the results of the lethal setting, but he’d heard about them. Horrific.

  “We need to cut them off before they get near the vault. In fact, I want that place to look dead, so if our girl is with that convoy, she walks right in—then we got her.”

  “Roger that. No sign of the convoy yet. Wait a minute. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take a look, Captain ...”

  A camera window opened in Brent’s HUD. Three trucks with lights off drove northwest up 1st Road, heading directly toward the Gold and Silver Towers.

  “That’s got to be her,” Brent said. “Heads up, everyone, this is Ghost Lead. Three trucks inbound. Do not make contact. Just observe, roger?”

  Alpha and Bravo teams checked in, and Schoolie, who was still deep in the parking garage, acknowledged that he had the trucks on Voeckler’s sticky cams.

  “Man,” added Schoolie. “Looks like they’re headed right for me. Wait a minute. They are! Coming down into this parking garage!” He cursed.

  “Schoolie, hide the gear and get to cover,” Brent ordered. “Do not engage. Observe only. Just like at the bar back home. Sit tight and watch.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Silver Tower

  Business District, Dubai

  Chopra chased the boys down the street, lost them in a crowd at the next intersection, then launched himself into the air, soaring like a bird as metallic wings sprouted from his back. He circled the crowd, spotted the boys once again, then swooped down and ripped the first one off his bike.

  The second looked up as Chopra plucked him from the bike and tossed him to the ground as the bike crashed into a pair of steel garbage cans near the edge of the alley. Chopra landed in front of the boys, who were still lying on their rumps. They backed away, stunned.

  “My father gave me this bike. You shouldn’t have taken it. You have no idea what it means to me.”

  “Chopra? Chopra?”

  He opened his eyes, saw a face half draped in darkness. The image grew more distinct ... Hussein.

  “We’re here now. We have to get you up,” the boy said.

  Where were they? He remembered being shot, the pain, the truck, something about not having much time.

  And then he remembered.

  He was dying.

  “Chopra, they’re going to move you.”

  His mouth tasted foul, his lips dry and cracked with something. He licked them. Salty. Blood. The shooting pain and hissing from his chest would not go away. His fingers and toes were beginning to go numb.

  Loud engines whined somewhere outside the truck. Chopra leaned his head to the right and spotted something quite surreal: Three forklifts powered by natural gas drove in a line past the truck and toward a long tunnel, their tiny headlights barely pushing back the darkness.

  A fourth forklift stopped behind the truck, this one driven by the Snow Maiden herself. She hopped out and climbed up into the truck. “We’re going to move you into the seat next to me,” she told Chopra.

  Hussein came around, and together they lifted him to a standing position. The world tilted strangely on its axis, and they caught him before he fell.

  Brent was climbing into an old Jeep Wrangler driven by one of Juma’s men when Schoolie called him. “Brent, I’m looking at her right now. I heard them come down here. There must be a tunnel that runs from this tower to the vault. They got forklifts. She’s got about a dozen guys. They look Chinese. Military. They’re heading over there. Take a look.”

  He finished taking a seat, then focused on his HUD, where he saw the Snow Maiden and the boy helping the old man into the seat of one of the forklifts.

  “Schoolie, you are way too close. Get out of there. Wait for us.”

  “Aren’t you going to thank me? You got confirmation. The target is here. I can move on her right now.”

  “Negative!”

  “It’s just them. Her team’s already gone ahead. I can take her out right now.”

  Brent shifted his tone. Dramatically. “Get out of there. If she spots you—”

  It had been the smallest reflection, so small in fact that the average person would not have seen it, but someone like the Snow Maiden, who had trained herself over the years to be hyperaware of her surroundings, picked it up in her peripheral vision. A trio of thick water and sewer pipes as fat around as a man spanned from the concrete floor to the ceiling in one corner of the sublevel, and it was there that she saw him, crouched behind one, his elbow partially visible, along with a wedge-shaped segment of his helmet.

  Who was he? She’d find out before she killed him. “Wait here,” she told Hussein.

  “I could run away,” he said.

  She looked at him. “I run fast.” Then she slipped off, away from the truck, hugging the wall behind them. Chen Yi had given her a combat vest and web gear whose pockets hung heavy with grenades. She reached the corner of the garage opposite the pipes and tugged free a grenade.

  “Don’t move!” came a shout from behind the pipes.

  An American. Damn, they’d caught up to her. It seemed Patti had done nothing to thwart their efforts.

  “Who are you?” she cried in English.

  “I’m the guy who’s going to capture you! Stand down!”

  She squinted toward the pipes as he came around with his rifle trained on her.

  “Okay, okay,” she said.

  Then she pulled the pin on her grenade, let it fly, and threw herself forward, onto the concrete.

  He fired, the rounds striking near her arm and leg as she kept rolling, knowing that his targeting computer would have to keep recalculating if she just kept moving.

  She thought he’d be faster, but he wasn’t. As he charged away from the pipes, trying to keep tight to the long, concrete wall, the grenade exploded in a magnesium-white flash, echoing in great thunderclaps down the tunnel and throughout the rest of the garage.

  The pipes immediately ruptured, water whooshing and jetting as the soldier in the high-tech combat suit dove to the floor.

  She found it odd that he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Her bullet didn’t care either way. It left her pistol and nicked the back of his head. A close shot but not a kill. His hand went up to the wound.

  Holding her breath, she took off, but a massive puddle now separated her and the soldier. She could barely keep her footing and wound up throwing herself down, onto her gut, and sliding across the wet concrete, firing three times at the soldier as he tried to turn and bring his rifle around.

  She caught him in the arm, the abdomen, and the hand, but his armor held true.

  He was a breath away from firing when she adjusted her aim and finally shot him in the head
, the blood spraying across the back wall.

  Gasping for breath, she rose, rushed to him, leaned down and pulled the blood-covered headset off, slipped it on, and tried to see what he saw.

  “Unauthorized user,” came a voice in her ear. “Shutting down ...” She ripped off the headset and threw it across the floor.

  Hussein was still waiting for her. She hurried to him and was joined by a trio of Chen Yi’s men, who’d no doubt heard the explosion.

  They helped load Chopra into the lift. She radioed to Chen Yi and told him what had happened. They needed to move the cargo trucks to the secondary tunnel. He agreed. The Snow Maiden climbed into the driver’s seat and threw the lift in gear.

  Meanwhile, behind her, the three men jumped into the trucks and followed her down the tunnel.

  The original plan had been to extract the gold from the main vault beneath the Almas Tower and move it underground to the Silver Tower. From there, they’d make their aboveground exit to escape. Now the Americans were aware of that. They’d have to move directly up from Almas.

  She called Patti, updated her on the situation. The woman told her not to worry, that the Euros were doing, as she put it, a splendid job.

  Schoolie’s avatar flashed red with a warning that he had no vital signs. A secondary message indicated that his communications and command had been locked down because of unauthorized use.

  As Lakota threw the Jeep in gear, Brent called up to Schleck and Riggs. “Get to the Silver Tower, fourth level. We’ve lost Schoolie. She’s got to be down there.”

  “Roger that,” answered Schleck.

  Poor Schoolie. How many times had he busted Brent’s chops, only to beg for a place on this mission? The irony could not be more bitter.

  “Look at that! They’re cutting us off!” cried Lakota.

  Two of the gunships had returned from the airport area to launch missiles on the bridges spanning the canal. There were four bridges in all, and they were targeting three, blasting away gaping sections that fell in an eerie slow motion toward the bubbling white water. Brent called up the map and nodded in understanding: They were not striking the bridge directly opposite the Almas Tower.